My exact reason for Alice dying is written down as "utero-placental insufficiency". That's basically a diagnosis by elimination - I had no placental abruption or anything else (except of course severe PE) that could have explained her death. Trying looking that up - it will give you a reason of a kind, though I don't personally find that helpful [ok, so I know why, but why me and my baby?]

I have read stories of women who had babies born still on other websites that never got *any* explanation, they didn't have PE, there wasn't a cord accident, etc. etc. etc. In fact, most of the parents in our support group had babies born still and have no explanation.

My *guess* in your situation is that it wasn't any one exact/specific thing in particular. With PE, remember, the high blood pressure, the protein, are all signs of the stress on your body, they aren't the actual disease, they are symptoms of the disease (which is thought to be caused by the blood flow to the placenta being "hijacked" from other parts of your body because the baby isn't getting enough blood flow.) Stress on your body= stress on the baby. I think that maybe there just gets to a point where their little bodies just can't take the stress anymore and stop working too. :(

Ladies, I can't possibly understand the pain of a stillborn and my hearts go out to you but I had HELLP and multiple miscarriages and I understand the question of why. I asked that of myself and my doctors all the time and I think I drove myself a little crazy for a while. And of course, I have no underlying diseases or reason for any of the miscarriages either. Only recently, I finally came to the realization that even if I knew all the reasons why, I would not feel better about what I went through. Instead, finding out more about what happened is just information for me to take into consideration for this next pregnancy. Knowing "why" doesn't bring my babies back or make what I went through with my daughter any less traumatizing for me.

I would not put down my daughter for weeks and for the 1st year of her life I did not let her out of my sight. The only people I trusted her with were my husband and my mother. This whole disease does a number on you mentally. Even though my daughter survived, I almost had to grieve the whole birth before I could move on and with each miscarriage after that I felt like each old wound was opened up again. Honestly, I think you need to give yourself time to grieve and let yourself feel those feelings. That is only way you can come to terms with it.

Hi Laura, I've gone through these feelings a lot because my Alice died in utero only a few hours after everything looking great on ultrasound (normal blood flow across the umbilical cord, normal fluid, baby moving normally, normal NSTs). The short answer is that no-one really knows; one specialist suggested it might be my BP (which was around 180-190 / 100-110 when I was diagnosed and admitted) because that went really high before it was controlled - but another expert dismissed that as very unlikely. Another I've spoken to suggested that "some placentas are very good at compensating for their inadequacies" - so everything looks relatively ok until the very last second almost and then everything goes pear-shaped big time. Shortly after she died I became very ill too - BP 240/120 (despite multi anti-hypertensives, falling o2 sats, HELLP etc. I know I had a very rapidly evolving disease process; and it all went downhill very fast - Alice dying was just the first sign of that (probably saved my life).

I don't know if this helps you at all but I find it so hard that she died in utero, even after I was in hospital being closely monitored. My daughter didn't die from prematurity like most PE deaths; she died due to the disease. When I'm feeling low I have no confidence for this baby (now 12+4) because I know that all the monitoring in the world can't always change the outcome, and in fact can't even result in the baby being born alive and getting a chance in the NICU :-(

From what I've read, it seems most likely your Cara (and my Alice) died due to lack of oxygen & blood flowing across the umbilical cord, but no-one will ever be really able to give us a definitive answer to this; not at the moment anyway. In my case, I know the situation in utero changed very fast.

Alice too looked very normal when she was born, apart from a bit of peeling around her finger nails and a nose bleed. I had a full post-mortem (because the hospital were so surprised she died like that); that just showed she was totally fine up to the time of death (the placenta was cr*p though).

I hope you can find some way of coming to terms with the uncertainty and grief xx

Im having a hard time lately missing my Cara. I am also having a hard time with understanding why she passed. The doctors told me she had only been gone a day. Her coloring was normal, no missing skin, no placental abruption...she was perfect. So can someone explain to me what took her?